"shaggy dog story" meaning in English

See shaggy dog story in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: shaggy dog stories [plural]
Etymology: Uncertain; probably from one of two jokes, one in which a protracted search for an alleged remarkably shaggy, talking dog ends in the discovery of the dog which, though it can indeed talk, is disappointingly not so shaggy after all; or one in which an even more protracted search for the shaggiest dog in the world ends in the utterly anticlimactic punchline “Now that’s a shaggy dog!”. Etymology templates: {{unc|en}} Uncertain Head templates: {{en-noun}} shaggy dog story (plural shaggy dog stories)
  1. An intentionally long-winded joke or tale featuring the narration of typically irrelevant details, and usually ending with an absurd or pointless punchline which is often a pun or Spoonerism on a known catchphrase, with the intended humor deriving from the combination of the excessive length and the anticlimax. Synonyms: shaggy-dog tale, shaggy dog tale, shaggy-dog story Derived forms: shaggy God story Related terms: Banbury story of a cock and a bull, cock-and-bull story, fish story, tall tale, whopper
    Sense id: en-shaggy_dog_story-en-noun-RLwF00Fr Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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  "etymology_text": "Uncertain; probably from one of two jokes, one in which a protracted search for an alleged remarkably shaggy, talking dog ends in the discovery of the dog which, though it can indeed talk, is disappointingly not so shaggy after all; or one in which an even more protracted search for the shaggiest dog in the world ends in the utterly anticlimactic punchline “Now that’s a shaggy dog!”.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (ca09fec and c40eb85). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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